Kay R. (kayprime) reviewed on 2/7/2013 + 38 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

I will not be finishing this series.

I'm willing to give the bad writing a pass on the assumption that something has been lost in translation from its original Swedish. However, Blomkvist and Salander are terribly generic characters. Blomkvist is written like some male paradigm from a cheesy romance novel. He's charming, smart, handsome, confident, virtuous, and not lacking in female attention. While Salander is like a tatted and pierced, goth, emo, loner teen from the YA section of the library. Also, either I'm a jaded miscreant or Salander's "secret skills" are not as scandalous as Larsson meant for them to be. But what really chaps my tits is that he spends more than half of the book establishing these tinny characters only to have them behave completely out-of-character when they finally meet! WTF? Blomkvist and Salander must be aliens because they make no sense as humans.

The only enjoyable aspect of the book for me was that Larsson included an ethical, non-monogamous relationship - even if it is only mentioned briefly and rather dismissively. It's nice to see popular fiction that includes healthy and functioning "unconventional" relationship styles. (However, Larsson is guilty of perpetuating kink and BDSM as part of some asshole's psychosis. And he couldn't even think outside the box enough to make any of the assholes women! Disappointing.)

Overall, I feel like I have been duped by the masses again. Just because a book is popular, it doesn't mean it's any good.

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